The Football Association Challenge Vase is an annual football competition for teams playing below Step 4 of the English National League System. For the 2013–14 season 535 entrants were accepted, with two qualifying rounds preceding the six proper rounds, semi-finals (played over two legs) and final to be played at Wembley Stadium.

Until 1974, football players were either professionals or amateurs. Professionals were paid to play by their clubs, and the only cup competitions such clubs were allowed to enter were the FA Cup and after 1969, for clubs outside The Football League, the FA Trophy. Amateurs, on the other hand, did not get paid (at least not officially) by their clubs, and such clubs had their own cup competition, the FA Amateur Cup.

Eligible teams who played in the FA Vase the previous season and finished in the top 4 of a Step 5 league are exempt from qualifying and start play in the First round Proper of the Vase, unless they were promoted to a Step 4 league. (If they were promoted, they would play for the FA Trophy instead.)

Eligible teams who played in the FA Trophy the previous season and were relegated from a Step 4 league are exempt from qualifying and start play in the First round Proper of the Vase as well.

Clubs that played in the 4th round or later of the previous season's FA Vase are exempt from qualifying and the first round and begin play in the Second round Proper.

Only five teams have managed to win the FA Vase more than once. Whitley Bay are the first team to win the FA Vase three times in successive seasons. Two FA Vase winners, Forest Green Rovers and Tamworth, have gone on to play in the Football Conference at the top level of the non-league pyramid. No FA Vase winner has yet reached the Football League, although 2008–09 finalists Glossop North End had briefly competed in the old First Division over a hundred years earlier, and 1985 finalists Fleetwood Town were promoted to the Football League in 2012 after winning the Conference, though they were reformed in 1997.